Friday, 25 April 2014

Tony Blair: Fictions and Contradictions.

'Tony Blair's speech this week at Bloomberg in London
reveals a growing support for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. A
decade ago, Blair was justifying wars in the Middle East on the grounds
that they would launch a democratic revolution and sweep away Arab
despots'.The hypocrisy of Tony Blair's Middle East vision Arun Kundnari, Guardian 24 April 2014)

To point to Blair's hypocrisy is to state the obvious. The question few journalists ever bother dealing with is why
western politicians have held to such double standards. With Blair, the
criticism even in 2003 was about why remove Saddam in Iraq but then back Saudi
Arabia's despotic theocratic state.

The reason is western energy
security, that is access to oil and gas reserves in a world of rapidly
industrialising Great Power rivals to both the US and EU states, not
least that of China, India, and, partly, Russia. With supplies of oil
struggling to keep pace with global demand a resource race is on.

The
Second Iraq War in 2003 was launched with reasons that had nothing to
do with the cosmic battle between 'extremist Islamism' and the forces
for secular democracy. By getting rid of Saddam Hussein, Blair seems to
have believed it would trigger off a domino effect with neighbouring
states.

The plan was for a sucessful model democracy to act as a
force for democratisation across the Middle East. If Blair could be
criticised for that, and what went catastrophically wrong, then it is
hardly surpising he has now had to go back on that and pose as a wise
realist in 2014.

The shift in Blair's 'thinking' is, as always,
explained by his need to reposition himself and to rationalise to
himself and the media classes why the Iraq War was 'the right thing to
do' and that it was 'extremist Islamism' and a violent jihadist death
cult that unexpectedly wrecked his plans for Iraq.

It's difficult
to understand why Arun Kundnani is so surprised that Blair has
'embraced Arab despots whose regimes, he says, are necessary bulwarks
against Islamism'. In Egypt, Blair regards the coup as a military
takeover, a transitional stage in a longer term democratic process.

Elsewhere,
Blair has not, in fact, embraced the Syrian government as a defence
against Islamism. On the contrary, Blair states not that 'Assad must go'
but that he 'should go' after an agreement has been made between the
two sides. However,

'Should even this not be
acceptable to him, we should consider active measures to help the
Opposition and force him to the negotiating table, including no fly
zones whilst making it clear that the extremist groups should receive no
support from any of the surrounding nations'.

Blair
has not 'embraced' Assad but is emitting vague and obliquely menacing
messages about 'the Opposition' having 'fissures and problems around
elements within', meaning, in ordinary language, that the insurgents
contain violent jihadists affiliated to Al Qaida and other Islamists.

Naturally,
Blair cannot use the term 'extremist Islamists' to a significant part
of the Free Syrian Army because that would mean admitting the West has
backed the very 'extremists' Blair has condemned elsewhere in Egypt,
most obviously the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

'Islamist
extremism' is a conveniently flexible propaganda term. 'Extreme' means
against Western strategy, in particular the oil and gas interests
Britain has in Egypt and in the Syrian Civil War where it backs Qatar
and Turkey who, in turn, fund and support the Muslim Brotherhood.

In
order to get around that obvious fact, Blair uses the term 'extremist
groups' to insinuate that he could mean those being backed by Saudi
Arabia in their proxy war against regional rival in Shia Iran. Only he
could not mention it by name, so it could be taken to mean only Iran and
its ally in Lebanon's Hizbollah.

These foreign
policy contortions, the use of abstract language and a simplified
worldview are a means by which Blair can make himself useful in 'framing
the debate'. Whether it bears any connection to reality is not so
important as 'shifting perceptions' in the west as regards the Muslim
World.

Partly, Blair wants to rehabilitate his image by claiming
what happened in Iraq would have happened anyway after the Arab Spring
just as it has unfolded in Syria. To 'engage' and 'commit' to
intervention earlier, as he was in Iraq, would have prevented massacre
and carnage. He needs people to 'believe' this.

In part I think he is trying to "frame the debate" so as to move the
focus before Chilcot reports. I think that he also realises that western
policy has got itself into a dead end in the region as the
contradictions have become too obvious (particularly in Syria). Blair
seems to think that he has to help to resolve some of those
contradictions, by hinting at the problem of jihadis in Syria and the
amount of support they have received from Saudi Arabia. Western policy
makers cannot go on pretending that these problems don't exist - they
have become too obvious and it is an embarrassment that western
pronouncements ignore them. Yet Blair has framed them in a way that
doesn't shine too much light on them (and doesn't say much about what to
do about them).

The contortions are obvious, but western
policies in the region are full of contradictions. A few contortions are
necessary to resolve some of those contradictions. Blair is
unaccountable, so he doesn't have to admit that what he is saying now
contradicts what he said 12 years ago.

Blair would have us believe that had the western powers took decisive
military intervention from the outset of the Syrian conflict, by using
air power as in Libya, then Assad could have been removed before Al
Qaida had a chance to exploit the chaos caused by civil war.

The point Blair misses is that the western powers ( the US, France and UK ) were
active and engaged in trying to get Assad to go by supporting Arab
backers of 'the Opposition' through the Friends of Syria Group. They
made it plain 'regime change' was the goal.

The mistake was not
in refusing to use decisive military intervention. Blair only claims
that to make his decision to join the US invasion of Iraq one of many
decisions about the problem of action or inaction which both can have
bad consequences in his view.

Had the western powers carried out a
Libyan style air campaign against Assad, the result would have been
similar-chaos.Ground troops, i.e a full scale invasion, would not have
been on the cards as Syria has little oil and the Iraq invasion had
discredited that option.

Blair's entire screed is based on a
mixture of geopolitical fantasy and retrospective wish thinking, 'if
only' this or that would have been done and attention and commitment
paid to the Middle East it would not be in the mess it's in now.

'I'm surprised that Blair and others in the
West haven't begun arguing more openly for the need to fight for
resources (strategic interests) instead of camouflaging it with other
agendas (fighting extremism, promoting democracy etc.). He did refer to
this in this speech, but that has largely been ignored in the media'.

Blair
did refer to it in passing and, at least, mentioned it as one very
important factor why the Middle East matters. The media ignored it
because it routinely screens out any mention of the role of natural
resources in driving conflicts before the public.

There is a sort
of taboo on mentioning minerals, oil and gas. Partly so as not to 'rock
the boat' and also because an advanced consumer society could not
function without access to the relatively cheap oil and gas that fuels the economy and high octane lifestyle western nations are accustomed to.

That basic reality has to be denied
because, humans can only bear so much reality' and so a sort of
geopolitical wish thinking takes over and predatory struggles over
resources have to be seen as secondary to ennobling causes such as
'democracy promotion' and 'our values'.

This does not mean
western politicians such as Blair do not mean that they believe western
military intervention is not about spreading democracy, the rule of law
and human rights. It is just that when energy security is threatened,
these get sacrificed.

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About the Blog

This blog is mostly about the New Great Game for resources across the globe, the impact of oil and gas dependency upon both Britain and the oil rich nations, the purported interconnections between foreign policy and terrorism, the growth of Islamism and the mendacious nature of much 'Public Diplomacy'. It also seeks to anticipate the forthcoming threats to world peace by discerning the true nature of the new emerging psychopathologies that come with the struggle over diminishing natural resources, global warming, proxy conflicts and the prospect of civilisational collapse in regions such as the Middle East, Central Africa and the Maghreb.